Thursday, July 17, 2014

Neon

Galerie Daniel Templon in Brussels mounted a show this summer for Chinese artist He An. The exhibition was called Wind Light as a Thief–

"He An’s light sculptures are made up of characters stolen – with the complicity of the local mafia – from the signs that light up his native city of Wuhan. Using these stolen ideograms, often damaged by the weather and the course of time, the artist recreates the names of people who are dear to him. We see the name of his father, a martyr of the regime, and of a Japanese erotic actress, the illicit heroine of his youth when her banned videos circulated secretly in China."

Much in the spirit of western avant-gardes during the last century, He An's work skates along the edge of subversiveness. Recent solo shows in Beijing and other Chinese cities demonstrate his skill at testing the boundaries of cultural acceptability without quite crossing them. Social dexterity replaces manual dexterity as the fundamental determinant of artistic success.

COMRADES OF TIME

"Hesitation with regard to the modern projects mainly has to do with a growing disbelief in their promises. Classical modernity believed in the ability of the future to realize the promises of past and present – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. The notion of a permanent art collection says it all: archive, library and museum promised secular permanency, a material infinitude that substituted for the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity, the 'body of work' replaced the soul as the potentially immortal part of the Self. . . . But today, this promise of an infinite future holding the results of our work has lost its plausibility. Museums have become the sites of temporary exhibitions rather than spaces for permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable."

– Borys Groys, Comrades of Time, 2009

"I study only what I like; I occupy my mind only with the ideas that interest me. They may or may not prove useful, either to me or to others. Time either will or it will not bring about the circumstances that will lead me to a profitable employment of my acquisitions. In any case I will have had the inestimable advantage of not having been at odds with myself, and of having obeyed the promptings of my own mind and character."

– from Products of the Perfected Civilization: selected writings of Chamfort, edited and translated by W.S. Merwin (1969)